R ichard M. E aton . India in the Persianate Age, 1000–1765

On November 16, 1842, Edward Law Ellenborough, the Governor-General of British colonies in India, issued a proclamation concerning the British Army’s carrying back from Ghazna, Afghanistan, the gates to the tomb of Sultan Mahmud (d. 1030). The gates, Ellenborough imagined, initially belonged to the Temple of Somnath (located in Gujarat) and Mahmud had “despoiled” the temple and carried off the gates to Kabul in 1020. “The insult of 800 years is at last avenged,” Ellenborough declared. Now, the gates “of sandalwood” would be paraded across North and Central India as “proof of your [the Princes and People of India] superiority in arms over the nations beyond the Indus.” The gates, of course, had no relationship to Somnath, and Ellenborough’s claim was soon dismissed as grandiose and made in the heat of the first Anglo-Afghan war. What remained entrenched, however, was the notion of a primordial struggle between Hindus and Muslims...

Afghan · Ancient history · Governor · Indus · Political science · Proclamation · Theology · Chinese history and philosophy · Engineering · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies